[guyzero]

It's probably not even possible to offer US cable networks outside of the US. They only have licenses from the content creators to show inside the US.

Besides, all their competitors are US only as well - Sling TV, DirecTV Now.

Someday who knows, but for now live linear is very region-locked.

[frandroid]

Parent's point is still valid. There's another 3+ billion of internet users outside the U.S., it would be nice not to be an afterthought's afterthought. They just need to say "Sorry, this product will not be available outside the U.S. at launch." Is it so hard?

[bfred_it]

Yes it is. From what I understand, a network will license a show to another network in another country, probably in an exclusive way. So they can't just "oh yeah you're paying us millions to distribute in your country? Let me just walk over you by streaming directly to your customers."

It doesn't work like that. These contracts are worth more than the few users that are willing to pay to stream across borders. Sad but that's TV life.

[khedoros1]

>> They just need to say "Sorry, this product will not be available outside the U.S. at launch." Is it so hard?

> Yes it is.

No, notifying that the offering won't be available outside of the U.S. wouldn't be difficult. Actually offering it outside would (and I think that's the question you were actually answering, which wasn't the question that was asked).

[mikepurvis]

This kind of thing is part of why Netflix & friends are so keen to create a bunch of original content— it's theirs, exclusively, and they don't need to deal with navigating all these preexisting commitments.

[thewhitetulip]

It was a running Joke about Netflix, "Available from anywhere across any OS [in the following regions North America, Europe etc]"

[Nullabillity]

They aren't competing against traditional cable providers, they're competing against TPB, and they're behind by a huge margin.

* Works with any player or device, vs you have to use their application

* Free vs $35/mo

* Has been available for 13+ years, vs available nowhere so far

* Available worldwide, vs some unknown region-locking but certainly US-only for the foreseeable future

* Has pretty much everything, vs "6 accounts" whatever that means

[nemothekid]

Live TV isn't competing against TBP. You can't watch sports or other live events on TBP. Why would you sign up for a live TV service, if you prefer to watch things on demand on TPB?

For any live TV offering they are competing against traditional cable providers. Netflix is already on their way on figuring out the "on-demand" content space. If you look at the blog post, 3/4s of the channels offered are either sports or live news. This simply isn't a service for on demand content.

[martinald]

You'd actually be surprised how good bittorrent live video streaming has got. I checked it out and it was pixel perfect 720p HD - absolutely fine for sports.

But yes, it's still niche, but wow it has moved on a lot. The program I used was called acestream.

[kaishiro]

This is still only true if you have the pipe. Attempting this from Melbourne and the streams still fall on their face.

[martinald]

It worked fine on 10meg/1meg ADSL2+. I think most people have access to that (at least in the UK, >95% of population).

[kaishiro]

Haha, 10meg down. I'm lucky to get 5.5...

[Aissen]

You only need a few people locally for the stream to become viable. That's the beauty of p2p.

[sergers]

Live TV competing with illegal IPTV service with reseller cost as low as 2$/month and consumer price 9-20$/month(on a small scale).

I know many people who have either cut their TV subscription, or at least scaled it down to lowest cheaper tier, since grabbing a mag254 IPTV box and finding a reseller offering upwards of 1000s of channels.

If u don't know about it, you may be content with standard livetv. But if you in the know, you are cutting at least part of your cable TV bill.